The Lost Letter

by Jillian Cantor

  I look at the envelope again. The address is typed: Frl. Faber, it reads. And below, an unintelligible address that I assume to be Austrian, based on what Benjamin said about the stamp’s origins. “I wonder what’s inside the envelope,” I murmur.

  “You can’t open it.” Benjamin pulls it back from me, holding it protectively. “You could diminish the value of the stamp.”

  “So it is valuable?”

  “Maybe,” he admits. “Or maybe not. Ninety-nine percent of irregularities I see turn out to be nothing. The stamps aren’t even real, sometimes.”

  “Promising.” I sink back in my booth, suddenly tired. It’s close to midnight now, and I’ve driven out to this random diner to see a nearly invisible flower that is most likely not valuable, or real.

  Benjamin looks at me for a moment as if he’s about to say something more about the stamp, but he seems to change his mind, and takes another sip of coffee. “You don’t happen to know where your father got this, do you?” he asks casually.

  “It’s hard to say at this point. He was always finding letters in thrift shops, at rummage sales. God, he dragged me to yard sales every weekend when I was a kid.” The memory sounds insulting, and I instantly want to take my words back. Because what I remember, what I really remember, is the feel of my father’s large hand against mine, the warm California sunshine against our faces when we got into the convertible so early on a Sunday morning, the smell of the bakery from the donuts we’d pick up on the way. The stamps were everything, my father said to me earlier, when he thought I was my mother.

  Benjamin finishes off his coffee. “Can I ask—why do you want the collection back?”

  “My father got upset earlier when I told him I brought it to you.”

  “How does he remember his collection? I thought you said his memory is gone.”

  I look down at the table and trace the edge of the plastic top with my thumb. The plastic is cracked and peeling. “Memory loss is a widening sieve.” I’m repeating what one of his doctors told me once, but his voice was stoic; mine sounds bitter. “Small things fall through small spaces, slowly at first, then more and more. The spaces widen. With my father, it’s mostly his short-term memory that’s gone now. I go to visit him every Sunday, so next week when I go back, he probably won’t remember that I told him today about bringing the collection to you. But he’ll still remember the collection, for sure.”

  “That must be hard,” Benjamin says. “I mean, for you.”

  “It is,” I say, and I realize it’s the first time I’m ever really admitting that out loud. The first time someone else is recognizing that what’s happening to my father is harder for me, in a way, than for him. Daniel never once acknowledged that. He saw my father’s memory loss only inasmuch as it affected our marriage, the way it took my attention away from him. And I feel a surge of warmth for Benjamin, this strange man whom I don’t even know. “I’m sorry about this,” I say. “I’ll pay you for your time.”

  Benjamin hesitates for a moment. “Are you sure you want to take the collection back and just forget this whole thing?”

  “I mean, it would be one thing if you thought this stamp was valuable, but it sounds like it’s probably not. So what’s the point, anyway?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Benjamin says. “I said it could be valuable.”

  “What, a one percent chance?”

  Benjamin smiles a little, maybe pleased I listened to him so carefully, and I get the feeling he’s not used to that. “It could be higher,” he says. “I’d have to put some feelers out, figure out what was going on with this.” His finger lightly traces the flower through the plastic. Then he pushes it back across the table toward me. “But why don’t you take this for now? Maybe you could show it to your father next time you see him, see what he says. Maybe he’ll still remember where he got it, or know what the flower means.” He pauses. “And then you can decide whether you want me to appraise the whole collection or whether you want it all back.”

  Benjamin’s words feel like an unexpected kindness, a space in which to take a breath, reconsider. He doesn’t sound angry that I’ve wasted his time, and I feel the need to thank him, though I can’t put my finger on exactly what I’m thanking him for. Still, I do. “Come on,” he says in response. He stands up, pulls a five out of his pocket, and leaves it on the table. “Let me walk you to your car. It’s late.”

  The next morning on my way to work, I find myself taking an unintentional detour, and I end up in the parking lot of the public library instead of the parking lot of LA Lifestyles Magazine. I go inside and use the pay phone in the lobby to call in sick to work, which is something that I haven’t allowed myself to do since Daniel told me he was leaving me. Even when I had that horrible head cold last May that would’ve justified using a sick day, I went to work. I didn’t want him to think that I was avoiding him. I wanted to show him that I was a consummate professional. I know I really need a new job. I’m not planning on spending the rest of my life working for my soon-to-be ex-husband. I just haven’t found anything yet, though, truth be told, I haven’t been looking all that hard either.

  I’d stayed up most of the night last night after my meeting with Benjamin at the diner, my heart racing from drinking too much coffee, too late. And from everything Benjamin had said. I don’t care about filing my review on time, or what Daniel will think of my absence today. I want to know more about this stamp, where it came from, why it might be important.

  I hang up the pay phone and walk inside the library, feeling wonderfully unfettered at the thought of not having to go to work today. I’m not sure what I’m looking for here exactly, but maybe something like the book my father was reading yesterday, and I walk up to the desk and ask if they have a copy. They don’t, but the librarian finds me another, similar-looking guide, a catalog of every stamp created in the first half of the twentieth century, divided by year, country, and engraver. “I had no idea there were so many stamp collecting books,” I say to her as I flip through the pages.

  She glances at me sideways. “We actually have an entire section devoted to philately.” I follow her toward the back of the stacks. She turns right, and motions to several tall rows of books. “Lot of collectors in LA,” she says. “Let me know if you need help finding anything else.”

  I thank her and begin to walk down the aisles. I’m still not sure what I’m looking for. But I feel a certain sense of allegiance to my father, to this curious stamp Benjamin noticed. With my father’s memory failing him, I can’t give up on his lifelong passion, just like that. It needs to mean something. Maybe if it means something, I can hold on to him just a little longer. And my father won’t completely disappear along with his memories.

  A few hours later, at home, I look through the books I gathered at the library and pour myself another cup of coffee. I squint through the tiny pictures in the large guide the librarian had found for me, scanning through the stamps of Europe shortly before the war, so many of them of Hitler’s horrible profile. Only the amount of postage or the color seems different. I flip back the pages, as if I can flip back time, go to a world before Hitler existed. I’ve flipped too far, the early 1930s, but I decide to start there and work my way forward.

  I flip past many busts and buildings I don’t recognize, until one stamp in 1932 catches my eye. It’s a flower. The entire square filled with its enormous petals. But something about it looks remarkably similar to the tiny flower in the steeple that Benjamin found.

  Edelweiss, it reads underneath the stamp. Engraver: Frederick Faber (1885–1938).

  Austria, 1938

  GROTSBURG WAS APPROXIMATELY two hundred kilometers southwest of Vienna, and while Vienna was as flat as the sheets of metal Kristoff had now come to find familiar, Grotsburg was a town of snowy hills, which led into snowcapped mountains on its western edge. Grotsburg was not easily reached by train, and only by car should one definitivel
y want to go there by choice. It wasn’t on the way to Salzburg or Graz; it was entirely out of the way.

  So even as they heard reports of Nazi soldiers moving into Vienna, Kristoff naively believed everything would stay exactly the same in Grotsburg. What should the Germans want anyway with such a small village all the way out in the countryside?

  Even in the middle of April, just as the snow had begun to melt, when there was an official plebiscite, 99.7 percent in favor of the annexation (Mrs. Faber had been right, they did have to vote, though it seemed Hitler had bought the vote, or had scared everyone into agreeing with him)—Kristoff saw no change in their lives in Grotsburg.

  Perhaps the only change at first was this: Frederick worked Kristoff extra hard throughout the spring, longer hours, some days straight through dinner until darkness overcame the workshop, and then they practiced only by candle. Mrs. Faber would leave food for them warming in the stove, and Frederick and Kristoff would eat together late, in semidarkness, after the girls had gone to sleep. But Kristoff didn’t complain. Not even when his fingers ached and became callused in new ways. The calluses meant to him that at last he was becoming something. He was becoming an engraver.

  By the summer, Kristoff’s hands understood the burin more. Kristoff could finally make a simple sketch on paper, and then translate that drawing onto a metal plate, in reverse, with some semblance of precision.

  Frederick picked up the plate and smiled. “You are getting there, my boy.” He clapped his hand on Kristoff’s shoulder and smiled at him, with what Kristoff believed was pride. “I knew you could do it.”

  Kristoff wanted to say something, but he couldn’t find the right words. He’d never had someone believe in him before, the way Frederick had, and the feeling of Frederick’s warm hand on his tired shoulder nearly brought him to tears.

  As summer turned into fall, and the leaves began to turn golden on the hillside, Kristoff became more confident in his engraving skills. And by the time the leaves fell and a chill nipped the November air, Frederick shared something with him.

  “What’s this?” Kristoff asked as Frederick handed him a stack of letters. He noticed the stamps. Hitler busts. Deutsches Reich stamps.

  “They’ve been sending me letters for months,” Frederick admitted. “The new government. The Germans.” He said the word Germans like it was a rotten apple and he wanted to spit it out. He motioned for Kristoff to open one of the letters, so he did.

  Kristoff read the words, disbelieving. They were asking Frederick to report to Vienna immediately and to hand over all of his engraving tools and drawings to the new government.

  “They can’t do that,” Kristoff said, his voice shaking in fury for the demands they were placing on Frederick. Frederick was an artist. Frederick had already given Austria so much, and now that Austria was annexed by Germany they wanted to take everything away from him?

  “They can,” Frederick said sadly. “They’ve already torn up Vienna. Half the universities have had to close for losing Jewish professors. Hospitals, too. Losing so many doctors.”

  “But Grotsburg isn’t Vienna,” Kristoff protested weakly. And that’s when he understood that Grotsburg did have something that the Germans wanted: Frederick.

  “Everything is growing more serious,” Frederick said. “Tensions are rising. I read in the newspaper that a Jewish boy shot a secretary at the German Embassy in Paris.” Frederick sighed. “As if they need another reason to hate us.”

  Kristoff had read the newspaper as well. It had been sitting on the table in the dining room as he’d drunk his coffee this morning. A headline decreed that all Jews were “murderers,” and Kristoff had put the paper back down on the table, the headline facedown, not having the stomach to read on. “What are you going to do?” he asked Frederick now.

  “I’m going to go do what they’re asking. I’ll go to Vienna.” He paused. “But then I’ll tell them about you,” Frederick said.

  “Me?” Kristoff didn’t understand.

  “I’ve been engraving stamps for my Austria my entire adult life.” Frederick spoke slowly, evenly, attempting to keep control of his emotions. “They will still need someone to engrave stamps for them. Someone who is skilled and who is not a Jew. They will need you.”

  “But I’m not ready,” Kristoff protested, altogether unsure that he could create an engraving plate from scratch without Frederick’s guidance. Or that he wanted to.

  “You are ready enough,” Frederick said. “You are as ready as you have to be.” Frederick sat down in his armchair. He looked around the workshop as if trying to memorize it, and then he put his head in his hands. “We will be leaving. For Vienna.”

  “All of you?” Kristoff didn’t want Frederick to go, but he wouldn’t admit out loud that even more he didn’t want to let go of Mrs. Faber’s cooking, Miriam’s laughter, and most of all, Elena. She had kept her distance from him all these months, but at times he would say something to her at dinner, and she would smile, and it would make his entire evening. Over the summer, he’d stayed in Frederick’s workshop practicing some nights after Frederick went to bed and Elena had come in and worked with the metal alongside him sometimes. Elena couldn’t draw as well as him, but she had a better eye for copying lines in the metal. So Kristoff sketched flowers for her, the edelweiss that bloomed along the hillside all summer long, and then gave the sketches to her to use for engraving practice. They worked with the metal as if they both belonged there, as if they both knew what they were doing, as if they both could become master engravers. Someday.

  He and Elena never spoke a word while they were in the workshop, and afterwards, it was like it never happened. But their arms occasionally bumped as they moved around, exchanging tools. Kristoff felt her closeness like a living warmth, the rays of sunlight that lit up the hillside in the summer, thawing all the snow and turning the world around them a verdant green.

  “I’m going ahead this week, to find us a place to live,” Frederick said, bringing Kristoff back to the chilly workshop. “The girls will join me soon, yes. Miriam can start at the Jewish school next quarter. And maybe Elena can take some courses at Universität in the spring.” He paused. “I’m giving all of this to you.” He motioned to the workshop and the house beyond.

  “But you can’t,” Kristoff protested. He didn’t want Frederick’s things, but more he didn’t want them all to leave him here. Alone. In a few short months it was as if Kristoff had never been an orphan, and he didn’t want to become that lonely boy again.

  “I want to give it to you while it’s still mine to give.” Frederick forced a smile. “Before they take it from me.” Then he added, “Maybe someday I can return for it, but I want it to be taken care of in the meantime. You’ll take care of it, won’t you?”

  Kristoff felt he had no choice but to agree. “Of course,” he finally said.

  Frederick set out for Vienna that afternoon, with a small brown suitcase and food Mrs. Faber made him: apricot jam on slices of challah, and a large jug of black tea. “I can buy food later in town, my love,” Frederick said. But he accepted the food and the long hug Mrs. Faber gave him.

  “I should go with you,” Mrs. Faber said, with a weariness in her voice that made Kristoff think she had already said this before, more than once.

  “You need to stay with the girls,” Frederick said. “And besides, I’ll only be gone a few days. A week at the most.”

  Frederick planned to walk to town before it got dark, and then spend the night at the temple. Tomorrow morning he would catch a ride to Vienna with Mr. Gutenheimmer, an old family friend who had a car, and who had business in Vienna. For many years he’d driven Frederick into Vienna with his finished engraving plates, when he was ready to deliver them to the printer. But Kristoff guessed Mr. Gutenheimmer had also been summoned into Vienna by the Germans. He was not only a lawyer, but also a Jew.

  “I have to go,” Frederic
k said, pulling back from Mrs. Faber. He kissed Miri and Elena on their heads, and he turned to Kristoff and held out his hand to shake. Kristoff felt he should say something, anything. But he didn’t know what to say. He held on to Frederick’s hand an extra few seconds longer than he should have, but then he let Frederick go. He had no choice.

  That evening Mrs. Faber went to bed before supper, claiming her head ached. Elena spread apricot jam on the remaining challah for her and Miriam, and Kristoff stood by the back window, staring out at the yard and the workshop. He had promised Frederick that he would take care of things. But he tried to imagine working for the Germans, creating and engraving Deutsches Reich stamps for them, all the while thinking of how they made the Fabers leave their home, their life. That wasn’t what he wanted; this wasn’t why he’d come here. Maybe he should return to Vienna, too, and use the money he’d saved up while living here to rent a tiny flat. He could get a new job, something easier than struggling with the burin. (Most things would be easier.) And he could still see the Fabers, if they were nearby.

  “Kristoff.” Elena interrupted his thoughts. “Do you want some bread with jam?” Her voice sounded smaller, softer. He turned to look at her. Her face was paler than usual, her green eyes seeming brighter in contrast. Her long hair fell in a mess against her face. She noticed his gaze, and she pulled her hair behind her shoulders, self-consciously, in a way that surprised him. “Kristoff.” Elena said his name more sharply. “Jam? Bread?”

  “Yes,” Kristoff answered her, though he didn’t feel hungry. “If it isn’t any trouble.”

  “No trouble.” Elena cut another slice of bread and smeared it with jam.

  The three of them ate at the dining room table in silence. Even Miriam sat completely still, chewing on her bread, not moving, not saying a word.

  Frederick had left; the entire world was changing. Kristoff wanted to reach out and stop it, to hold everything else entirely still. He didn’t want to be left here, in this house, this life, completely alone.